The Swan School

I have two children in this school now. They are both very different personalities and both have had lots of opportunities and are very happy there.
Contrary to an earlier review about Maths teaching, my children a actually rave about their maths teachers. They are tackling quite tricky maths it seems to me. They both have different teachers and both describe the way the teachers take time to explain things in the classroom and then follow up with them next lesson and in hw. Reading the review which suggests you'd be just as well using youtube- well, it feels like that child is at a different school! Oh well, I suppose people's experiences vary.
The staff to me seem young and with lots of energy - committed to making a difference. We have had so many positive experiences and the idea that this school is somehow cold and strict- it just doesn't describe the reality of the day to day for lots of young people who are thriving there. Choirs, school plays, chess club, running club, DofE...
I feel really glad my two children got in to this school and are so happy there.

The school is completely horrible, they are extremely strict, vegetarian menus, long school hours the workbooks are horrible, I really don't reccomend this school it's absolute garbage

My nephew went here until year 9 when he moved school. I was asked to help him with his algebra since he’d missed a few classes due to illness and was struggling to catch up. There didn’t seem to be any kind of clear syllabus to follow, no workbooks had been provided, so helping was a real challenge for me and I had to resort to looking online to find a typical syllabus. The teachers test the children frequently and provide a traffic-light score for various maths topics. Rather than provide additional exercises for weak areas (to complete and have marked), the teachers only provided a test result score sheet with “Use Dr Frost to help you master the topics you need to improve on”, ‘Dr Frost’ being a rather clunky website that was difficult to navigate even for an adult. Topics on the website are broken down by code, but there is no way of knowing which codes are relevant to which year in the school, so I had no idea if the exercises were too advanced or too easy. The teachers do not provide a list of codes for the weak areas either in their test score reports. It was a minefield and I ended up buying him two Year 8 Maths exercise books from a book shop, which he had no idea how to use since they don’t teach children to use exercise books at this school (he had no idea the answers were at the back of the book!). It all felt like very impersonal teaching on the cheap, where children are tested and then provided a spreadsheet output score, rather than the teaching staff being genuinely interested in helping them with specific topics. The children would probably receive just as good as an education from YouTube to be honest. I was also amazed the children are given homework when the school day is almost as long as an adult working day. I’m not sure what they are doing at the school if they still have homework to do at the end of such a long day.

The school doesn't appear to have in mind the general welfare of there students, and puts more focus on enforcing discipline for the smallest of things (ie: If your child accidently drops a pen, or if they need to fulfill there basic human right of going to the toilet). A very cold atmosphere, wouldn't recommend unless you put your child's education over there mental health.